Learning by living

Every single word hurt. Their words hurt. At that time I did not realise why and how they could be so mean to me. Was I really so funny that I deserved to be laughed at? I pretended I did not listen to their words, to their pointless teases, to their unuseful complaints. I was too naive, childish, ugly, stupid to their superficial eyes; I allowed so many labels on me that I even did not know who I was. That was the problem. I never asked myself who I was. If you don’t know your value, you will believe every thing you hear about you. In the deepest I knew I was not all the labels they did put on me, but to some of them unfortunately I believed. For ages I thought to be ugly, not to deserve the love of someone else, because I was not used to be loved. Still nowadays, many years later and with a better knowledge of myself and a right quantity of self-esteem, it is unbelievable sometimes when I notice that people encourage me and they show me their fondness. I was so used to turn discouragements as a fuel, as efforts to be and do better, to show those people that they were wrong, that I felt under pressure when someone told me, a couple of months ago: “You will manage your master’s exam!”. At the age of thirty, it is still new to me to be encouraged by someone else. When people are so nice to me, I have the tendency not to believe them, or to think that one day, they will go away from my life like some other people already did when I was younger. I know that these thoughts seem quite negative and they may convey a sense of pity, but it’s not pity what I want to offer to my readers. It’s the story of a woman who changed adversities in opportunities, who did not surrender to become as mean as she was treated.

I decided to write here to share my experiences, and one of the first topics I thought was bullying. I was not heard and listened at that time, I was simply invisible. I healed, all alone, but when I have the possibility to talk about it, I want to talk about it. I want to share my experience, to encourage parents to listen to their children, to encourage youngsters not to throw their frustration on other people, to avoid that they will become frustrated adults who will hurt other people as well. Being frustrated is a human and normal emotion, or feeling, but it is not normal to use it as an explanation to your bad behaviour. This is what I learned from those times (and from other people who have been trying to discourage me even after the school years).